Once More Unto the Breach
by Fabullus
Summary: Gene and Alex finally give into their feelings, but the consequences - both unimagined and impossible - ripple across universes, and Alex finds herself forging a new and unexpected path in the world she has come to love. Gene/Alex
1. Chapter 1

It starts, as these things often do, with a kiss. There are wet lips and hot mouths, breath on skin and gliding hands. Whispers and whimpers and sighs of contentment. Grabbing, holding, stroking, learning. Love bites, scratches, open-mouthed kisses. There is him and her and music and the night.

And then, finally, a breathless peace.

They lay quietly in the dark, chests heaving, until their heart rates gradually slow and the power of rational thinking returns. The night is warm, but a cool breeze steals in through the open window, trailing its fingers over naked skin and hair that is damp with sweat. It should be beautiful, lying together in the pale light of a summer moon, but sleep refuses to come and the sun rises, daubing the sky with a soft pink glow, before either of them drift off.

He does not hold her. She curls up, faces the window and closes her eyes in the hope that he'll think she's asleep, and he turns his head away, evens his breathing so that she might believe the same. With the explosion of their passion comes an awkwardness, a strange reversion to Ma'am-and-the-Guv, colleagues and foils, and any tenderness, any electricity melts away into unease.

When Alex wakes, a little before eight, he is gone.

* * *

It's hard getting ready for work that morning. At every turn there are reminders of him, of their evening, and she finds herself consumed by a vague emptiness she cannot shake. Every mouthful tastes like sawdust, every sip of water like bitter lemon, and she is angry at herself for being so affected by the whole ugly spectacle.

Did she expect him to hang around? Did she want him to? She knows that she could have turned to him, kissed him, curled against his side with her head on his chest, and looking back, she's not sure why she didn't. Afraid, perhaps? Ashamed? Either way, it makes her feel cold and used and pathetic, and she never wanted to feel like that because of him.

Her clothes are still scattered across the living room and she picks them up without looking at them. She tries not to remember the way he peeled them off her, her jeans, her cream blouse, tries to forget how his hands felt as they trailed across her skin.

With a cry of exasperation, she dumps them in a pile in her bedroom and slams out of the flat, irritated at her mind's refusal to switch off. Work, that's what she needs. A complex, difficult case where she can lose herself completely to anything but the crime, the profile, the thrill of the chase.

But work will bring Gene, and Gene will bring memories and awkwardness and probably embarrassment, so she turns off in a different direction. She has half an hour before she's due in and she strolls down towards the train station, watches the crowd of commuters flood in from London Bridge. There seem so few of them, compared to how many there will be in twenty five years, but she recognises their single-minded purpose, the expressions that say they are already engulfed in the world of their jobs, and it comforts her, just a little.

By the time she gets to work, she has managed to steel her nerve, and she breezes through the door with only the tiniest hitch in her breath when she sees Gene talking to Ray.

"DI Drake, how nice of you to finally join us," he snaps, and then slams into his office.

Ray swivels round on his chair to face her, eyebrows raised as he pinches a cigarette between his finger and thumb. "Don't ask me," he says, although today, just this once, she knows the cause for his bad mood. "Like a bear with a sore head this morning. Stay out of his way, I would."

She tries for a smile, isn't sure if it's worked because Ray has already turned back to the file on his lap. "I'll keep that in mind."

She is just sitting down at her desk when Shaz comes over. As much as she likes Shaz, she wants nothing more at that moment than to bury her head in a case file and forget this bloody awful world, and as a result the smile she offers her younger colleague is verging on half-hearted.

"Shaz?"

"Ma'am? Got those files you asked for yesterday." She deposits a sheaf of papers into Alex's in-tray and then hovers, frowning as she looks into her face. "You all right, Ma'am? You look awfully peaky, doesn't she, Chris?"

Chris appears at her side and frowns too, pulling the cigarette out of his mouth so he can concentrate. "She's right, Ma'am, you do look a bit pale. Want me to get the guv?"

"No!" Alex cries, then realises her slip from the expression on their faces. "I mean, no, thanks. Ray says he's in a bad mood, don't want to make it any worse."

"Fair enough." Chris wanders off but Shaz hovers anxiously.

"You sure you're okay, Ma'am? You left Luigi's early last night…weren't you feeling well?"

Alex drops her eyes quickly to the documents Shaz has given her in the hope that she doesn't notice the way she's blushing. She left early because Gene had his hand on her thigh and was whispering filthy things in her ear. She left early because she took their superior officer back up to her flat and shagged him rotten.

"Had a bit of a headache. Fine now, thanks." She flashes Shaz another brief smile and pretends great interest in the list of car registration plates. "If you don't mind, Shaz…"

Shaz hesitates for a beat, and then nods. "Course, Ma'am. Sorry."

Once she's gone, Alex lets out a tiny sigh. How the hell is she going to get through this day if people are constantly reminding her of the night she is trying to forget? Is she trying to forget it? It was certainly…interesting. Intense. Incredible.

Jesus.

"_Drake_." Gene's voice booms out from his office and she takes a deep breath before getting to her feet_. So that's the way he wants to play it_. She lifts her head up and stalks through into his office. If he wants to ignore the fact it ever happened, so bloody be it.

Two could play at that game.

* * *

As she stands in front of his desk, arms folded, eyebrow raised, waiting for his order, she tries desperately not to remember how he'd looked last night, naked on her bed with swollen lips and mussed hair.

He is flicking through a file with a nonchalance that infuriates her, and when he finally looks up, his expression is carefully neutral.

"Burglary, Inspector." She grits her teeth against his formality. "Down by the river, a corner shop." He checks the details, finger trailing down the page, and she tries not to remember how it felt on her skin. "Owner's a Mr Chander. This is the third corner shop burglary we've had this week, and we are going to catch these little scrotes before they get their filthy paws on anyone else's hard-earned cash." He gets abruptly to his feet, hands flat on the desk, watching her with a challenge in his eyes. She mirrors him, leaning over, tries to ignore the flutter of disappointment when his gaze remains firmly on her face and doesn't stray towards her cleavage.

"Anything significant about the burglaries?"

"Yep. They're all owned by Indian immigrants, and the burglars have left this delightful little scrawl on the shop windows once they're finished." He pushes a photograph towards her. The word _scum_ is interwoven through the points of a swastika and she shakes her head in disgust.

"Racism's the motive, then."

"Thank you for that enlightened comment, Columbo. Hadn't even occurred to me." He moves around the desk to fetch his coat and she inhales sharply as he brushes past her, shoulder lightly, accidentally grazing hers. Every touch, no matter how tiny, seems electric and she curses him for somehow managing to distance himself from her, from the spark of tension that runs as a quiet undertone to their conversation.

"Do you want to head down there now?" Maybe he's waiting until they're in the Quattro, where there will be no interruptions, before he broaches the subject. She feels her spirits lift marginally at the prospect, before any hope is smothered quickly by panic, by fear of whatever this might be between them.

"You're all right. I'll take Ray. You go with Chris and talk to the other victims again, in case there's something we've missed." He steps out of the door, cocking his head at his sergeant. "Raymondo, with me."

And then, just like that, in a whirl of overcoat and dismissal, he's gone.

* * *

She doesn't go down to Luigi's that night. She doesn't think she can bear the confusion and whispers of CID when she and Gene don't sit together at their usual table, nor the blank rejection of his neutral expression. Whatever she expected from last night, it wasn't this. She knows it's half her fault. She knows she was awkward and distant when she could have curled against his side or put her arms around his chest, but looking at him from the corner of her eye in the darkness of the bedroom, he was as uncomfortable, as uncertain, as she was. She's never done this before, slept with a colleague, and she is angry at herself, at him, for destroying their friendship with what can only be a meaningless shag.

Sighing, she kicks off her boots and finishes off the bottle of wine they started last night, sprawled across the sofa with the armed robbery file open on her lap. There's something she can't put her finger on, something fluttering at the corner of her mind that disappears when she seeks it out, and she frowns down at the page, willing it to come to her.

Her day spent revisiting former victims with Chris was largely unproductive. Those targeted are too frightened to speak out again, which makes her wonder if there hasn't been a little intimidation going on behind the scenes. It frustrates her that these hard-working, honest people are singled out solely because of their nationality, and it frustrates her further to know that even by 2008, racism is still rife in London's streets.

She stays up until gone midnight, half watching a film and half scanning the documents in front of her, and tries to tell herself it's not because she's waiting for him. There have been so many nights he's woken her by banging on her door and sauntering in for a late night drink, or else staggered to her sofa and collapsed into a drunken sleep.

When the clock ticks towards to one o'clock, she gives up. She's not exactly sure what she wants from him - she certainly never expected a fairytale romance, or even a repeat performance. It wasn't planned, last night. It was the result of months of tension, of attraction, and it was fierce and desperate and incredible and all the things she expected from Gene Hunt, except that he was tender, too. Odd moments, tiny caresses, the brush of his fingers over the slope of her neck. Was it his tenderness, so incongruous against the rough movement of their bodies, that left her feeling so awkward, so self-conscious?

She slips beneath the covers and presses her face into her pillow, turning away from the empty side of the bed, the side that she knows still smells of Gene. It takes a long time for her to fall asleep, and when she finally does, she dreams of swastikas and Gene and a ghostly child she somehow knows is Molly, and she wakes to find her pillow wet with tears.

* * *

The next few weeks pass in a haze of cool civility. It's as if they've turned the clock back a year to when they knew each other only superficially, but she can't help the shivers that fizz through her every time he brushes past, and once or twice, when he thinks she isn't looking, she sees his eyes linger on her a little longer, an expression on his face akin to longing.

She's been feeling under the weather for over a fortnight, struck by stomach cramps, nausea and spells of dizziness that come and go as suddenly and intensely as a thunderstorm. She self-medicates with wine and, when she's sober enough, with aspirin, and it's not until she finally gets round to marking off the days in her calendar that she finds the missing link between her symptoms.

Realisation hits her in a solid wall of emotion and she collapses abruptly into her kitchen chair, cold suddenly, shivering, shaking so hard she can hear her teeth rattling. This shouldn't be possible. This _can't _be possible. She clutches the edge of the table as though it will protect her from the crashing wave of panic, before staggering to her feet and into the bathroom, retching fruitlessly into the toilet. She only stops when her eyes are flooded with tears and her throat burns with bile, and then she crawls into bed, drawing the covers over her head like she did when she was a little girl having a bad dream.

She feels like she should cry or laugh or scream or _something_, but now the initial shock has passed, she can only lie in silence, questioning the motives of her own mind and the tricks of her body.

Eventually, she slips from the bed in the early hours, eyes bloodshot with exhaustion but mind racing too fast to sleep, and stands in front of the calendar again in her bare feet, moonlight pooling on the kitchen floor.

A blob of red marker pen is inked onto the same day every month, and she counts the days with her eyes, over and over and over again until the figures begin to blur and disbelief is swallowed by cold reality.

Eight days late. _Eight days late_.

She slides down to sit on the floor, back against the wall and knees against her chest, and from the corner of her eye she sees Molly at the table, face lit by the muted glow of twelve flickering candles.

"I know if I look at you, you'll disappear," Alex says softly into the twilight, turning her face away to rest her cheek on her knees, "but I'm going to sort this out, Molls. I promise. Whatever happens here...it isn't real. You're what's real." She pauses, and for the first time that evening, a tiny, broken sob shatters her voice. "Don't give up on me, Molly. I'm coming back to you."

But even as she says it, the first fluttering of new life is stirring within her, unfelt and ignored, as the DNA of Alex Drake and Gene Hunt interweaves and interlaces, and a tiny life comes slowly, quietly into existence.


	2. Chapter 2

**Thank you so much for your amazing reviews - they really made my day. I'm sorry for the long wait, this chapter underwent numerous rewrites before I was finally happy with it!**

The next few days pass in an uneasy sort of silence. It is like the gathering of clouds before a storm, when the whole world holds its breath and waits for it to break. They have made no progress with the armed robberies and CID is shrouded in tension, because the Brass are putting pressure on Gene and he in turn is being particularly stringent, so that Chris and Ray don't have a moment to sit down and Shaz is running constantly back and forth to the evidence room.

For Alex too, it is the calm before the storm. It's been almost a week since her discovery, almost a week since every notion she had about this world was upended and then rammed down her throat, and it isn't getting any easier. There's a part of that's crying out for this baby, for the love and security it will bring, yet admitting its reality would in turn be denying her daughter. She has never felt so torn, so lost, because not only is she being forced to accept the world she has so far rejected, but she is having to do it without Gene at her side.

It's difficult to pinpoint exactly why sleeping together destroyed their relationship, but she has a horrible suspicion that it dredged up feelings that both of them have been trying to ignore. He's not so much cold as distant, not so much angry as offhand, and somehow she finds it worse, that she's being treated like the rest of them, a thorn in his side and a burden to bear.

Of course, there is still a fragment of her mind that insists she's not even sure yet. She hasn't taken a test – too afraid to buy one from any of the nearby pharmacies lest she's recognised and it gets back to Gene, and too busy to venture further than the surrounding area. In a fit of desperation, she phoned a doctor they helped out a while back when his house has burgled, because, thanks to the fact that Shaz's housemates are nurses, even the hospital is off-limits.

Alex sighs and rubs her forehead. A vague pain has started to throb behind her eyes and she needs to get out of here, away from the whiteboard of evidence and the useless witness statements. She sighs again, tries to focus on the file in front of her. There is still something nagging at her when she examines the photograph of the swastika, but her mind feels fogged with thoughts of Gene, of Molly, of the spark of life that even now is growing and stretching within her. She drums her fingers against her desk.

"Chris." She turns round on her chair and he looks up at her expectantly. "Are there any well-known fascist cells operating in the city at the moment? Any demonstrations?"

He blinks at her. "Not that I know of, Ma'am. Membership of the National Front's dipped, as well. I was reading about it in _The Times _last week."

Alex raises her eyebrows, surprised. "You read _The Times_, Chris?"

"Shazzer told me to." He smiles and she can see the pleasure in his eyes at this glimpse of recognition. "She said I should 'broaden my horizons', and that looking at naughty pictures in _The Sun _isn't going to help me make DS."

Ray looks up from the file he's reading to snort derisively. "Poof."

"Shut it, Ray." Now Shaz joins in, giving him a dark look. "Just because your intellectual limit is _Dennis the Menace_, it doesn't mean you can have a go at Chris for trying to keep up with current affairs."

Ray glares. "I think you're forgetting who you're talking to, _Constable_."

"All right, all right." Alex interrupts, seeing that this is quickly descending into madness. "It doesn't matter who reads what. I only wanted to know if there's any fascist activity in the area." She rubs her hands wearily over her face. The pounding behind her eyes has intensified, and the familiar squabbling of CID is doing nothing to improve her mood. Getting to her feet, she pulls on her coat and slips past her desk.

"Ma'am? Where are you going? D'you want me to get the Guv?" Chris is already moving towards Gene's office, face anxious.

"No! Don't bother the Guv. I'm just...going out." She pauses and then, at their doubtful expressions, adds: "To follow up a lead!"

She doesn't look back as she strides through the doors, letting out a soft breath of relief as she hears them slam shut behind her. She needs to get out, clear her head, think, and she can't do that when she's got Gene breathing down her neck about a profile. She's not even sure where she's going. She just walks, soothed by the steady click of her heels on the pavement, refreshed by the cool wind that runs its fingers through her hair.

She finds herself at the British Library with a vague sense of purpose. When she was pregnant with Molly and the world, her husband, people's smiles became overwhelming, she'd often retreat here, flash her warrant card and then wander through the shelves unheeded. When Molly got older, they'd come to exhibitions, and Alex would lift her daughter onto her hip so that she could see into the glass cases. Molly always loved reading.

_Oh God, Molly._

Alex closes her eyes briefly against a wave of dizziness and then moves through into the foyer, showing her warrant card and slipping into a reading room. There are two or three books left behind on the table, books written in German that Alex can't understand. She pulls one towards her and flips it open, scans down the page through a vague curiosity as to whether she remembers any from senior school. Her eyes flick restlessly over the words. There are a few she recognises - simple things like _and, big, road _but it seems to be largely historical, and the vocabulary is lost on her. She continues to flick absent-mindedly through the pages, using it more as a means of escaping the relentless circle of her own thoughts than a pursuit of knowledge, but suddenly something catches her eye, steals her breath.

In front of her, on the left-hand page, is a picture of a Nazi rally. Thousands and thousands of Germans, lining up to _heil Hitler! _and welcome in what they hope is a new era. She traces the swastika on their armbands, frowning, and then, out of nowhere, it hits her.

She's grabbing her coat and she's running before she's even really registered what it means. She's angry with herself, furious, because if she wasn't so distracted she'd have worked this out days ago. The confusion that's been fogging her mind melts away as she hails a cab and races through the city, fingers drumming a frantic rhythm against her thigh. The taxi driver frowns at her in the mirror.

By the time she bursts through the doors of CID, she is out of breath. Gene is standing over Ray's desk and he wheels slowly to face her, one eyebrow cocked.

"Ah, the wanderer returns. Nice trip out, was it, Drakey? Don't worry about us, we were only working ourselves into the ground to catch these bastard robbers."

"The swastika." She's out of breath, too caught up in her own realisation to bother responding to his comment, and she clutches her side, rubs at the stitch that has formed below her ribs. "It's not what we think."

Gene is still staring at her. "Well go on then, Miss Marple, do enlighten us."

She straightens up and moves to her desk, pulling a pad towards her and sketching a rough outline of a swastika on the page. "This is what was on the Nazi uniforms, right?" They nod. "And this..." she trails off, flips the paper over and draws again. "...is what was on the shop windows. See the difference?" At their blank expressions, she sighs. "This one is at ninety degrees. The emblem employed by the Nazis was set at an angle."

Gene sniffs. "So they can't draw. Hardly the break we've been looking for, is it, Drake?"

Alex tries to swallow down a white hot wave of anger, a crackle of irritation that shoots up her spine. He's a bastard, a misogynistic, arrogant, ignorant _bastard_, and suddenly she thinks she might enjoy telling him she's pregnant, because just for once she'll get to see him wrong-footed.

"It is if you know anything about basic theology. This symbol..." she taps the second sketch, "was conventionally used by Hindus to depict the sun god Shiva, until it was hijacked by the Nazis as a representation of fascism. We've been looking in all the wrong places." She stabs the pad triumphantly with her pen. "The robberies are perpetrated by people _of the same race_."

There is silence for a few moments, and then Ray lets out a long, low whistle.

"Bleedin' Nora. So the twats are robbing their own? They're more stupid than I thought."

Alex gives him a withering look. "Just because they're the same race, it doesn't mean they're all best friends, Ray." She turns to the whiteboard and rubs away some of their notes, sticking up her drawing and then tapping the pen against her teeth. She feels alive again, doing what she does best. It feels good. "The question is why. What's their motive?"

No one answers.

"Jealousy? Could be one of them, you know, honour killings," Chris volunteers finally. She smiles at him and writes it on the board.

"Good idea, Chris. Though that doesn't explain why they'd target each other's shops, particularly as the victims aren't from the same family. Anyone else?" She glances at Gene. He's watching her, arms folded, leaning against the desk, and he holds her gaze. It makes her shiver.

"It sounds silly, Ma'am, but what if some of them are breaking away from the faith? Could it be a way of reminding them where they've come from?" Shaz says shyly, and Alex beams.

"Fantastic! I think we need to start looking into any fanatical elements in the community, see what comes up there. This is going to be more complex than we first thought, and we'll probably meet a wall of silence. We'll need to work hard to gain their trust." She turns to Gene, and her heart is hammering almost painfully in her chest. She needs him with her on this.

"Right." He stands up. "You heard the woman. Chris, you and Shaz head over to the victims' houses, find out if they've strayed from the faith. Ray, you take Terry and go down to the Temple, ask around, see if there are any fanatics hanging around. Drake..." He looks at her suddenly, his blue eyes bright and piercing. "With me."

She follows him into his office and perches nervously on the desk. He hasn't called her in since they slept together and the moment feels terrifyingly significant, because surely he wouldn't just pick up their old habits again with no real reconciliation.

He busies himself pouring out a measure of scotch for each of them, and when he hands one to her, he doesn't meet her gaze. Instead he swirls the whisky around his glass, quiet, pensive, and then takes a long sip. Finally, he looks up and she's surprised to see hurt in his eyes.

"What do I look like, Drake?" His voice is cold.

She stares at him for a moment. Where the hell is this going? "You're...the Guv."

"Exactly. So can you tell me why I found myself taking bloody phone messages for you when you buggered off earlier?" He turns sharply away. "I have no interest in your pissing social life, DI Drake, and I do not like having to be your personal secretary!"

She flinches at his tone. She has no idea what he's talking about and her mind whirrs through the possibilities. There hasn't been anyone since him – no one before him, really, not for months – and so she just frowns, nonplussed.

"What are you talking about?"

"Don't play silly buggers, Drake!" He moves to face her again. His mouth is drawn into a tight line and his eyes flash silver with anger. "Some posh twat rings up to confirm you 'popping over' at 6 o'clock tonight, and you're telling me it's not a date?" He slams his hand on the desk. "You haven't even finished work by six! You don't have to like me, but you should bloody well respect me."

Suddenly, Alex goes very cold. How could she have forgotten? The doctor – James Harrow – said yesterday that he'd call back to confirm the appointment for her blood test, and she let Gene answer the phone. She closes her eyes briefly.

"Gene, it's not what you-"

"Do _not _bullshit me!" He slams his glass back on the table and draws himself up to his full height, bristling with anger and hurt and injured pride. "I don't even know why I was surprised. It was clear that night meant bugger all to you. I should've guessed you'd drop your knickers in a heartbeat for the next privately-educated tosser who comes along!"

There is a beat of silence, and then she slaps him hard across the face. He reels, but his eyes are alight with anger, with satisfaction at making her lose control.

"You _bastard_. You self-righteous, hypocritical, arrogant _bastard_." She is seething, fists clenched at her sides, quivering with fury, because how dare he make her out to be some kind of slut when she's carrying his child? She doesn't care about doing it the right way anymore. She just wants to make him hurt as much as she does. "Do you really want to know why he called, Gene?"

He looks along his nose at her, face set in an impervious scowl. "I'm on the edge of my bloody seat." His sarcasm stings.

"He's a doctor, calling to confirm my appointment for a blood test." She pauses. "I'm _bloody pregnant_, Gene!"

There is a sudden, all-consuming silence. He is completely still and she stares at him, chest heaving, jaw set. It doesn't feel good to see him like this, not like she thought it would. Instead she feels hollow and cruel and ashamed, but she can't take the words back so she just waits, body held rigid against his certain rejection.

"Is it mine?" His voice is low, and his eyes, when they lift to meet hers, are hard.

"Of course it's yours! Contrary to what you might think, Gene, I'm not some slag who goes around shagging anything with a pulse." She takes a deep breath. "I only found out last week. It's definitely yours."

She waits for him to say something, anything, but the silence stretches on, driving them further apart with every second that ticks quietly by. Finally, he swallows, reaches over the desk for his coat and then shrugs it on.

"Gene? Where are you going?"

"Get out of my sight, Drake." He pushes her roughly aside and stalks out of his office. "Just get the _hell _out of my sight."

And then he's gone, the doors slamming shut behind him, leaving Alex standing alone in front of a bemused CID, her vision clouded with tears.


	3. Chapter 3

**Thank you so much for your amazing reviews! They really do mean a lot. I'm so sorry for the ridiculously long wait for this chapter...my first term at university left me with no time for writing! I hope you enjoy it :)**

Alex Drake is in a bubble. She is submerged in warm water, cheeks puffed with air and eyes closed, face held beneath the surface as though it will protect her from the mad chaos of her life. The roar of traffic is only the faintest hum under here, the whole world shrunk down and tucked away, so that she floats in an aura of the most fragile, untainted peace.

When she feels the oxygen start to run out, she opens her eyes. The dying sun is low, shining through the window to dazzle her even underwater, and she is aware of her hair, dark curls suspended like roots beneath the bubbles.

She sits up with a gasp. Everything seems so loud without this aquatic insulation and she tips her head back against the lip of the bath, takes a deep breath to clear the dizziness behind her eyes. Alone and unashamed, she looks down at her body, at the peaks and falls, the miniscule imperfections, the signs of her age, her sex, her lifestyle. She has the tiniest pair of stretch-marks around her bellybutton, a remnant of her last pregnancy, of the child she bore in another lifetime. Will they get worse, with the growth of this new baby? Will they expand, silvery memories bursting into angry red scars? Her hips, too, are marked with the fine threads of her pregnancy and she runs her fingers over the broken skin, wonders if he noticed when he held her there, when his hands stroked so smoothly over her body.

She can see her reflection in the mirror she has propped against the end of the tub. Wet hair clinging to her face, clear skin, chapped lips, hazel eyes enormous against the pale complexion. Hazel eyes. Not blue, not like Molly's, not like Gene's. She got her eyes from her mother like so much of herself, the metabolism, the sharp jaw, the fierce independence. From her father she took tolerance, height and a taste for the opera. What would her child receive from its parents? Would it have those Gene Hunt eyes, his defensiveness, his staunch sense of right and wrong? Or would it be like her, intelligent, intellectual, yet somehow lost, afraid of messing up? Would their child still be like him, even if he declined to be involved? Suddenly, the question of nature versus nurture seems vitally important. Does she even want their child to be like him?

She ponders this question as she gets out of the bath. While she towels herself dry she considers all she hates about him – his arrogance, his prejudice, his brutality, the way he is changeable as mercury and just as indefinable. Then she dries her hair, curls it carefully although there is no one to impress, not tonight, and she remembers the qualities she admires, the fundamental elements of his character. His principles, his passion, the trust he has in his job and his team. His basic decency. The way he makes her feel safe. The glint of his eyes when he laughs. That secret smile.

When she is ready, skin moisturised, hair perfected, she wipes her face clean again, pulls on some old pyjama bottoms and a shirt that is probably his, and flops in front of the television with a bottle of wine, her way of giving two fingers to the ritual of dating. She doesn't need his help, and she certainly doesn't need him. She has done this before. She remembers the way she went to pieces after Pete left, a whole night spent sobbing into the darkness, and then the way she got up the next morning, calmly tended to Molly, got dressed and went on with her life. People used to remark on how well she was coping, holding down a researcher position while managing a baby, and she just smiled and shrugged and didn't tell them about that one dreadful night or the many nights that followed. And then, within a year, the placement at the CIA came up and she and Molly spent eighteen months in the America and when she came back, everyone had forgotten the custody battle and the divorce. A new lease of life, except she couldn't forget the past.

And now here she is, about to embark on the whole thing again, and although she is trying to be strong, dread drags at her heart and she is filled with a fierce injustice that she has been dealt the same hand. A single mother, in a time which is so much less accepting. Another baby born into a broken home. And Molly, so far away and needing a parent, the job she was truly born to do and which she is being denied.

Alex falls asleep there, with the half-empty wine bottle leaking white wine onto the sofa and _Rocky _playing on in the background, and she doesn't awake until she hears him at the door, two short, tentative knocks on wood. For a moment she lies still. Molly? Evan?

But it is 1982 and dreams don't come true and so it must be Gene, the one man she knows she must talk to but whom she can hardly bear to look at. Slowly, she gets to her feet, throws off the blanket and rights the wine bottle. She is wearing no make-up and her hair is in disarray and she has probably been crying, but to Alex Drake, none of these things matter anymore. They are no longer lovers and she is no longer a seductress. She swings back the door.

"Alex." She nods. She doesn't say his name back because she doesn't think she can. "Can I come in?"

She pauses for a moment. The absurd thought _what would my mother say? _runs through her mind and then she shakes it off. She has lived too long in the shadow of her parents' death and now they are alive, she will not be dominated by them any longer.

When she steps back to allow him through, she sees, curiously, that there is fear in his eyes. His whole body language is taut and she feels suddenly, miraculously powerful. Bizarrely, she thinks that to speak would only splinter this aura of authority so she remains silent, cold, a stranger to him.

He sits down suddenly and heavily. The air rushes out of the cushions with a hiss.

"I'm so sorry." His bald apology startles her and she looks up sharply, unprepared for such frankness, such honesty. "I'm a bastard, Bolls, a big, ugly bastard who can't do anything right." He leans forward and rubs his hands down his face, a gesture which makes him look, absurdly, like a chastened little boy. "I don't know what to say. I didn't mean any of...what I said. I just...it was a shock, a massive bloody shock, that's all." He looks up at her imploringly. "Say something."

She sits down too, but more carefully than him, as though to move suddenly would fracture her poise. She folds her hands neatly in her lap. She knows he is expecting her to shout and scream and throw things, but the truth is she's tired and it's late and she doesn't want to cry in front of him.

"This..." she trails off, horrified to find tears burning the backs of her eyes. "_Christ_." She takes a shaky breath. "This is such a mess."

He bows his head in acquiescence. "I know. What do we do?"

She laughs bitterly, a laugh that is heavy with tears, tips her head back so they don't fall. "I have no idea. When Pete left me...I had no choice. I just had to get on with it." She looks at him now, spreads her hands in her lap. "I don't have the answers."

There is a pause. "Do you want me to marry you?"

"No!" She gets abruptly to her feet, still clinging to those last threads of self-control. "Jesus, we can't even work together, how the hell would we live together? I'm not out to trap you into some sham marriage that will leave us more even more screwed up than we already are!" She shakes her head as though it will clear this whole situation, like a dog with a flea in its ear. "You humiliated me today, Gene." It is the first time she's said his name. It quivers on her tongue. "You called me a whore in front of the whole team, degraded me. You can't _do _that!"

"I know, I know." She doesn't understand why he isn't angry, why he isn't shouting like Gene Hunt does, but then she realises he's wound as tightly as she is, emotions kept in check by willpower of steel. "I'm sorry, I am. Kneejerk reaction and that." He sighs. "I don't know what I'm supposed to say."

"There's not a script." She turns away from him, arms folded across her body. Why is it so difficult, being a grown-up? Why is everything so complicated? "Do you even want to be involved? If not, I can tell the others it's someone else's, get a transfer, bring it up on my-"

"Yes." He cuts across her. "I want to be involved, Alex. That's my child and I'll be damned if I let you pass it off as some fatherless bastard."

"Nicely put." She can't help the sarcasm.

He lets out a strangled cry and gets to his feet, paces once, twice around the coffee table. She watches him like a cat, unsure whether to flee or pounce, and then quite suddenly he stops in front of her. When he touches her, it is like an electric shock. It flips a switch but she's not sure what for; all she knows is that she is alive, vitally alive.

"I'm trying to do the right thing. I don't know how any of this works but I'll be there for everything you want me for, and then when it's born I'll have him for weekends, take him to the park, show him to my mam. And we'll be civil to each other because I am _not_ having my child brought up in a warzone."

There is something in his tone which catches at her heart. This is the real Gene Hunt, painfully exposed, a little boy hiding from his father's shadow, a child longing for the day when he is big enough to stop the beatings and protect his family, and she feels an absurd connection to this strange new man.

"I grew up not knowing what I'd find when I got home." He is facing away from her now and his tone is rough as a fingernail snagged on wool. "This is why I've never had kids – because I didn't want them having the same shit-awful childhood as I did."

She is drawn to him. Her fingers reach out, map the broad planes of his shoulders through the cotton of his shirt, trail down his back and then back up to his neck. He shivers.

"What are you doing?"

She turns him slowly to face her as her hands begin the unhurried process of unbuttoning his shirt. "Does it need a label?"

He watches her for seconds that turn into minutes, until he stands bare-chested before her. She doesn't know what she's doing, doesn't want to think, to reason; she just knows that she needs him tonight, needs him as a tether to this earth because right now she feels like she's free-falling.

She shrugs out of her shirt, peels off her pyjama trousers. She stands before him clad only in her underwear, wondering if she has ever felt so vulnerable as this, but then he reaches out and she thinks he is going to touch her, but he only picks up the shirt and drapes it over her shoulders. There is something resolute in his expression.

"Not tonight, Alex." His voice is low. "Not like this."

And then she breaks. All the anger, all the confusion, it pours out in a torrent of incomprehensible words and she's sobbing and she's hitting him and he stops trying to fend her off and just holds her until she's stopped fighting.

"You are _not _going to reject me, Gene!" she cries, and she pounds her fist once more against his chest. "You are not going to bloody leave me here alone!"

"Shh." He pulls the shirt away from her body again and walks her backwards into the bedroom. She falls onto the bed and he crawls towards her, wraps her in his arms and kisses her shoulder, her throat, her cheek and her hair, hands stroking, soothing, reassuring her in the darkness. He holds her until she's cried herself out and then they both sleep the sleep of the troubled, while deep inside, their baby grows steadily on.

When she awakes, it is to swollen eyes and nausea and to Gene, watching her with an expression of haggard exhaustion. This is not romance or perfection or a pledge, and it is hesitant and they are both so afraid of saying the wrong thing, but he's stayed.

And for now, that has to be enough.


End file.
